Figure #4 and audio #4 displays another example of Wilhelm Larsson's typical speaking styles. He often comes back to a interval leap with septims. 

Speech into music notation

By analysing short parts of Wilhelm Larsson’s speech, I set out to look for overarching musical qualities in his rhetorical means and prosodic patterns. Could favourite intervals, recurring rhythmic patterns, or perhaps even tonal structures that were maintained throughout a story be identified?          

This analysis was made by ear and translated into standard musical notation. Hereby, I had to limit the material to characteristic shorter selections of the recording, since this analytical method was very time-consuming. Already at the outset, I was well aware that a machine analysis of the data would be more efficient, and allow for the use of bigger data. However, I chose to work from my own listening, since the analysis also served as a way of developing my individual performer's voice. This also allowed me to select material that I found musically interesting. My analysis was based on repeated listening, until I found a certain phrase or part of a sentence that caught my ear, and stopped there. By looping that part, the melodic content would eventually stand out, and was then transcribed into music notation. 

When a few of these transcriptions were created, I could identify that Wilhelm Larsson's storytelling had some recurring patterns, related to rhythm, melody and timing.

As an example of the musical structures identified, Figure 2 and 3 shows how sentences would sometimes be structured to remain in one key, and audio files #2 and #3 plays Wilhelm's voice. 

Selecting materials from the archive

After listening to many files from the ISOF archives, I chose to focus my explorations on recordings of Wilhelm Larsson (Isof 1940), since it was obvious that he was a great storyteller, using many typical narrative tropes drawn from Fryksdalsmål. Larsson was a teacher in Sunne, and by that a professional in delivering oral presentations. He speaks with great confidence, and it is clear that he enjoys the recording situation. While many recordings in the archives are in the form of interviews, the selected recording is instead a documentation of his storytelling, without the presence of an interviewer. He speaks in the melodic dialect from Fryksdalen in the middle of Värmland (audio #1):

Rhetorical figures 

After these detailed transcriptions, I turned to a more over-arching listening, to form a bank of rhetorical figures related to musical shaping. I listened for longer parts of the recording, and stopped when I found something that caught my interest, musically.  My findings show that Wilhelm Larsson:

• Uses a short silence before a stressed word (audio #5)
  
  
• Uses staccato before a stressed word (audio #6)

• Uses different pitches to sonically imitate or represent other characters in the story (audio #7)

• Uses larger intervals within the sentence when conveying something humorous  (audio #8)

• Often rests on a certain pitch on hesitation noises (audio #9)

• Uses larger intervals within the sentence, when conveying either a pedagogic or empathetic tone (audio #10)

• Expresses negative emotions by making a large downward pitch drop (audio #11)

Repository - storytelling and rhetorical figures

Storytelling is one of the fundamental forms of communication among humans. It helps us "describe ourselves, our families, our ancestors, our history, and our place in the living world" (Institutet för språk och folkminnen 2023, my translation). Sweden has several regions with their own storytelling traditions, and some are particularly notable. Värmland, in southwest Sweden, is renowned for its strong storytelling tradition, that inspired several notable authors, including Selma Lagerlöf, Gustav Fröding, and Göran Tunström. 

The storytelling tradition of Värmland has always been a source of inspiration for me, and I have felt that a good storyteller's way of captivating their audience is genuinely expressive. So - what is it they do? From a musician’s perspective, I would say they use their voice to shape and emphasize their storytelling, changing their sound to imitate other voices or creatures. They create a form for their storytelling where silences also matter. Most likely, they will also use body language to emphasize their stories (though that is beyond the scope of this project). 

In short, they have rhetorical tools, or figures, they intuitively and sometimes consciously employ to make their storytelling come alive. In this repository the rhetorical figures I found when listening carefully to a good storyteller are presented. 

All audio files and the text transcriptions are presented through an old form of Swedish dialect. Maybe only a few persons will actually understand what is said in the audio files. However, my focus is not on what is said, but rather how, and by that possible to understand even for a non-Scandinavian speaker. 

ISOF's archival voice recordings

The Institute for Language and Folklore (ISOF) is a governmental authority that builds and collects knowledge about Swedish language and culture. In their archives, a rich collection of voice recordings of Swedish dialects are found. While the first recordings were made in the late 19th century, the major part of the collection was recorded in the 1940s and -50s (figure 1), with the clear ambition to preserve the Swedish dialects for the future. The recordings were made in a mobile studio, built in a re-made Volvo car. The recordings are now digitalized and open-access. 

Even at the time when the recordings were made, they had a retrospective character, as the interviewees often tell stories of earlier times. In each village they visited, the interviewers sought out the best local storytellers. This has turned the archive of ISOF to a collection of stories from the past, that today can unwrap hidden fragments of history, but also of historical prosodic qualities.